Mediagazer: Rdio acquires shuttered Indian music streaming service Dhingana (MediaNama)

1:00 AM ET, March 14, 2014

Top News:

Rosie Gray / BuzzFeed:

An inside look at what it's like to work at Russia Today, the Kremlin-funded media outlet — How The Truth Is Made At Russia Today — “It was my first job and I feel embarrassed and ashamed.” An inside look at what it's like to work at the Kremlin-funded media outlet.

Discussion: @intelwire, @peterlauria3, @buzzfeedben, @thegoldfarb, @rosiegray, The Daily Beast and Poynter

Max Seddon / BuzzFeed:

Russia Wipes Opposition Sites From The Internet — “I don't even know if anyone is reading this anymore.” — Via blackhole.beeline.ru — Russia has all but eliminated the free media as it fights an information war against the West over Ukraine, with prosecutors blocking independent websites …

Discussion: Columbia Journalism Review, New York Times, TechCrunch, Global Voices, @kasparov63, @miriamelder, @jeremyduns, Reporters Without Borders and Committee to Protect …

David Remnick / The New Yorker Blog:

Putin Moves Against the Press — One of the most riveting and liberating events of postwar life was the Soviet policy of glasnost, the Gorbachev-era explosion of media. The euphoria came not from the means of transmission but, rather, from what was being transmitted—and read, and heard, and seen.

Discussion: New York Times, The New Republic, @digiphile, @nxthompson and The Newspaper Guild

Alec Luhn / Guardian:
Editor of independent Russian news site replaced with pro-Kremlin figure

Discussion: The Moscow Times, Hollywood Reporter, Associated Press, Kirk LaPointe's …, New York Times, Trust.org, ITAR-TASS, The Malay Mail Online, kyivpost.com, Reuters, @asluhn, The Moscow Times, @jbenton and @emilydparker

New York Times:

Questions About News Photographers in Syria Arise After Freelancer's Death — Late last December, Ahmad Barakat, a tailor turned rebel commander in Aleppo, Syria, buried two sons who died together during a battle with Syrian government troops. The elder son, Mustafa, fought for the Tawhid rebels.

Discussion: Foreign Policy, Corey Pein, @donaldrwinslow and @jswatz

Kate Knibbs / Daily Dot:

BuzzFeed aggregation of tweets about sexual assault raises questions about ethics of embedding — The ethics of embedding tweets — Christina Fox, a prolific Twitter user under the name @steenfox, posed a question to her followers: What were you wearing when you were sexually assaulted?

Discussion: BuzzFeed, Poynter, PandoDaily, @chiefelk, @ejleven, @memories_child, @evanselinger, @anildash, The Root, @steenfox, @xmisstanisa, @adrianchen, @amir, @anildash, @kateknibbs, The Wire, @kvox, Washington Post and Talking Points Memo

John Kell / Wall Street Journal:

Liberty Media Drops Proposal to Fully Acquire Sirius XM — The Plan Now Is to Create Two New Tracking Stocks — Liberty Media Corp. dropped its proposal to acquire the rest of satellite-radio provider Sirius XM Holdings Inc. that the media-investment company doesn't already own.

Discussion: Variety, New York Times, Bloomberg, Reuters and Hollywood Reporter

David Gelles / New York Times: Charter Still Hanging Around Time Warner Cable

Caroline O'Donovan / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Survey of nearly a thousand web pages looks at interactive features for news … The Engaging News Project at the University of Texas at Austin has a new report out today called Interactive Features in Online News. In order to get a sense of how features like polls and various share buttons …

Discussion: Engaging News Project

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Sulzberger: The family won't sell the Times; succession plan in the works — Last fall, when Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post from the legendary Graham family, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times and patriarch of one of America's last surviving newspaper dynasties …

Discussion: WWD Media Headlines, The Huffington Post, AdAge, Media & Entertainment, @niemanlab and @adamnagourney

MediaNama:

Rdio acquires shuttered Indian music streaming service Dhingana — Exclusive: Rdio buys Dhingana to Enter India — US-based music streaming website Rdio has acquired Indian music streaming website Dhingana, Dhingana has confirmed to MediaNama. MediaNama had heard about the development from multiple industry sources.

Discussion: TechCrunch and The Next Web

Bloomberg:

Facebook Unveils Video Ads to Court TV's Market — Facebook Inc. (FB) is releasing its long-awaited video-advertising product today, as the world's largest social network moves to diversify its revenue by tapping into television-marketing budgets. — The 15-second spots …

Discussion: Forbes, TechCrunch, Gigaom, Mashable, The Wrap, Variety, Reuters, AdAge, Business Insider and @sarahfrier

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

Plex opens up Chromecast to everyone, adds automatic camera upload — Media center app maker Plex followed through on a promise Thursday to remove restrictions around its Chromecast implementations, opening up the feature to all of its users including non-subscribers.

Discussion: blog.plex.tv, 9to5Mac and TechCrunch

Joe Coscarelli / New York Magazine:

Nate Silver talks about data journalism, competition and managing FiveThirtyEight — Nate Silver on the Launch of ESPN's New FiveThirtyEight, Burritos, and Being a Fox — Stats superstar Nate Silver hates the term “data-driven.” He also hates the work of just about every popular columnist …

Discussion: American Prospect, @jazayerli, @emilybell, @jyarow and @natesilver538

Henry Taylor / TheMediaBriefing:

A digital only Lloyds List: How's one of the world's oldest papers coping without print? — Lloyd's List announcing last September it was going digital-only was seen as a symbolic changing of the guard. It was said to be the world's oldest continuously published newspaper before dropping its print shackles.

Laura Hazard Owen / Gigaom:

Amazon raises the price of Prime to $99/year, citing increased fuel and transportation costs — OK, it's official: The price of Amazon Prime, which offers unlimited two-day shipping and other perks for $79, is increasing to $99 per year. Amazon's stock was up over 2 percent on Thursday morning.

Discussion: The Wrap, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Globe and Mail, Refinery29, Variety, Re/code, ZDNet and Forbes

Sherwin Siy / Wired:

Everyone Wins With Copyright Takedown Notices — Except the Public — The notice-and-takedown system created by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides an essential safe harbor for online services to innovate. This system is the result of an intense series of negotiations between content …

Discussion: Daily Dot

Jeff John Roberts / Gigaom:

Drone flight over Harlem disaster shows messy state of FAA rules — After a gas explosion destroyed two buildings in New York on Wednesday morning, a local man launched a DJI Phantom II to film the action. The 3-pound, 4-blade drone captured 30 minutes of footage; here's a screenshot …

Discussion: NY Daily News, TVNewser, Poynter and Bloomberg

Natalie Jarvey / Hollywood Reporter:

Next-Gen Cable Startup Layer3 TV Raises $21 Million — The Boston-based startup has snagged Eric Kuhn, formerly head of social media at United Talent Agency, to run marketing. — Boston startup Layer3 TV has raised $21 million to make waves in the cable industry.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Broadcasting & Cable and Re/code

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Edward Snowden looms over Pulitzer Prizes — Next month, the trustees who oversee America's most distinguished journalistic award could face their toughest decision in at least four decades. — The issue before the Pulitzer Prize Board: Does it honor reporting by the Washington Post …

Discussion: Hit & Run, Mediaite, @jeffjarvis, @erikwemple, @jackshafer, @jayrosen_nyu, @mlcalderone and @dylanbyers

Ricardo Bilton / Digiday:

The rise of the mobile editor — CNN readers following the news of yesterday's explosion in Harlem via their phones owe a lot to Etan Horowitz, CNN's mobile editor. — From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday, Horowitz and CNN sent out four push alerts to app users with the latest developments about the blast.

Discussion: @robynpeterson